


Psychosomatic

by dweeblet



Series: Going, Ghosting, Gone [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Altered Mental States, Body Horror, Denial, Gen, Sensory Overload, Unreliable Narrator, Vomiting, ghost hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22873597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dweeblet/pseuds/dweeblet
Summary: Danny got a paper cut.Time dilated. He trembled on the bathroom floor for what felt like a long time. It could have been minutes, or just as easily hours. It made no difference to him.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton
Series: Going, Ghosting, Gone [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649161
Comments: 24
Kudos: 271
Collections: Body Horror for the Changelings





	Psychosomatic

**Author's Note:**

> Originally a rewrite of "Paper Cut" as seen here:   
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/10451091/chapters/23071806
> 
> It grew beyond that, though, so it gets its own story posting. :)  
> Also, it's officially set in the same universe as Momma's Boy & The Miracle Year, and acts as a standalone prelude for anybody who wants more ghost hunger angst hours.
> 
> P.S. Please don't copy/reproduce anywhere else.

Danny huffed against his forearm, chin pressed to the scratched-up surface of his desk. Lancer continued to ramble in his periphery—and he tried to pay attention, he really did, but the words floated in one ear and out the other, meaningless noise. He thumbed along the corner of his textbook, quietly flicking the pages with his left hand while his right took down sparse notes. 

Sam and Tucker had both placed above him into a slightly more advanced section, so they could help if he asked, but it was still a pain to be without ready-made notes to borrow. It kind of really sucked.

“Turn to section five," said Mr. Lancer. “Page two-hundred sixty-one."

Lowering his pen, Danny moved to do as he was told, but found himself interrupted by a sudden slit of pain across the pad of his thumb. It was small, but a fresh paper cut stung on the most sensitive part of his dominant hand. He sighed. Just his luck, wasn’t it?

Lancer cast a wary eye towards Danny's noisy hiss of discomfort. He pressed his thumb against his lips, sucking briefly on the cut, before shaking his hand out with a sheepish grin. After a moment's examination, the teacher dipped his head and resumed whatever he was writing on the whiteboard. Danny swallowed.

Ectoplasm had a very distinct taste and texture. It was thick and syrupy and congealed easily into something like soft gelatin. Even as a liquid it was freezing to humans, mildly corrosive and sick-sour like rot. For Danny the taste was like sucking on a penny soaked in embalming honey. Dense and filling and refreshing and light. Coppery and bitter but giving way to stagnant sweetness, staticky like pop rocks but also luxuriously smooth and filling citrus-sharp  _ ambrosia— _

It made him feel like an odious, vulgar, wicked dead  _ thing _ to have thoughts like that. But ghosts weren’t monsters and he really wasn’t a ghost. It was fine. He was fine.

Some shadowy echo of that alien bliss passed over his tongue when he swallowed, thrillingly cool as it slid down his throat. Faint, masked by heavy rust, diminished, but fresh. It must have been a mistake, but he  _ knew _ it. His mouth grew immediately slick with desire, teeth seeming to throb with his pulse.

He glanced surreptitiously around and pressed a palm to his chest. His core hummed, frigid and dormant opposite his sluggish heart, but also weightless and prickling with muzzy excitement. Uneasily, he tamped it back down, shrugging to shake the eagerness from his back. It must have been nothing. Danny slowly, carefully picked up his pencil to resume jotting down notes. He just needed to last through class— 

Ectoplasm, or something like it, dripped sluggishly down over the lead, fragrant and heady. Just a drop coaxed free of the seam, but his wet mouth flooded. Drool slipped past his lips to crawl down from the corner of his mouth, and he hastily tugged at the front of his shirt to wipe his face. His heart leapt up to his throat as he turned his hand over to examine his injury: virescent sludge oozed from the papercut on Danny’s thumb. It was  _ black _ . He almost choked, but glanced up to find shaggy dark hair hung over his brows. He was human, but this wasn’t his blood. This had to be a mistake.

It didn’t glow like raw ectoplasm, but it wasn’t red either. It was too thick. He had no way to explain the oily dark green-grey  _ stuff _ leaking from his skin. Danny closed his fist around it with a grimace. The not-blood beaded beneath the pressure of his fingers, but did not escape. He wiped it on the waistband of his jeans instead, where his baggy shirt would hide the stain. Shaking, Danny raised his uninjured hand.

“Yes, Daniel?" The teacher's sharp grey eyes passed him over once, then again, and his sleepy brow furrowed with just the slightest hint of worry. How many other eyes were on him? Everyone was staring. “You look pale. Are you feeling unwell?"

Danny wanted to answer, but his teeth were too big and his tongue felt thick and clumsy. His syrinx squeaked. This was a mistake. It was wrong. He was still drooling, but he couldn’t swallow. He must have been doing a worse job controlling his breathing than he'd thought, because Mr. Lancer was at his side in an instant. All the hair on his arms stood on end; his neck prickled, lips itching, ears burning. 

When had he started to tremble? It was so loud in the classroom—a score and change of syncopated human heartbeats like drums pounding booming crashing constantly in the air. Pencils scratched and feet tapped and keychains clattered. It was loud like war. His core screamed beneath his ribs, drowning out his sluggish heart. Was he even breathing at  _ all _ ? 

Mr. Lancer moved to help him up. “Do you need an escort to the nurse?"

He shook his head vigorously, fisting his hands in his shirt. “Bathr’m,” he managed to slur. He rose to his full height and wobbled that way. His skin was too tight. Vertigo pressed down on him, and he bent over with arms wrapped tightly around his middle. He was going to burst out of himself. Danny’s mouth was dripping; he hoped it could be passed off as symptomatic of the nausea. “G’nna throw’p.”

Danny started towards the door before Lancer even finished nodding. Distantly, he registered the teacher giving instructions to the rest of his class: _do_ _odd numbered problems on page two-eighty-seven, you can collaborate, finish the rest as homework_ —

The empty hallway stretched on forever. Wasn’t the bathroom only a few doors down? Danny swayed, vision swimming in watercolor smears. The cut on his hand was shallow and it hardly even bled at all. It didn’t even hurt. It was a  _ paper cut _ . There was no reason for him to feel this way—this sickness. Suffering. A craving for something he couldn’t quite grasp. He’d swallowed a full ecto-filtration cell on Wednesday, so he couldn’t be Hungry. Besides, he’d never reacted to his  _ own _ blood before at all, let alone so soon after feeding his ghost half.

This was a mistake. Was he really this paranoid? This weak?

What was wrong with him? He  _ wasn’t _ Hungry, he was Full. Just the thought of Eating made him feel sick with guilt; his guts twisted at the sheer ugly selfishness of it. He could go without for weeks more, if he didn’t waste his energy—there was no reason to want to take so badly, to be so gluttonous, and yet here he was, drooling buckets in public at the mere  _ suggestion _ of ghost-blood like some kind of starving animal. He was ugly and it was evil, bristling through his insides, sticking him full of shame.

His core was heavy in his chest, leaking cold into his bones like reverse-heartburn. The bathroom tile felt tacky and hot under his knees. When had he gotten there? He lunged over the bowl and coughed up a wet slurry of ectoplasmic slime. Ropes of mucous slobber swung from his parted jaws as he dry-heaved into the toilet—he had nothing to throw up but bile, briny and sour. Hot tears stung at his eyes and Danny choked on a wretched sob.

The bathroom door clicked shut. “Daniel?” Mr. Lancer’s nervous heart was very close behind him. “Do you need me to call your parents?”

Danny growled. His syrinx popped in his throat, issuing a low whine of ghostly static that he fought to swallow and suppress. “No,” he croaked, breathing hard enough to ruffle the water in the basin. He choked on his tongue. “No, no, no—J’zz—?”

“Jasmine?” Lancer ventured. His voice shook, panic spoken of in the rabbit’s pace of his heart. It filled the space where Danny’s own chest throbbed so quiet and sluggish, sticky, faltering—if he focused he could pretend it was his own. “Do you want me to get your sister?”

Danny nodded through his swimming vision, still slavering even as he retreated from the basin. It wasn’t going to stop. He wanted to ask for it to be over, but the English language was starting to become blurry. A ragged noise escaped him, broken and pathetic. Clear globs of slime fell from his mouth and hit the tile with faint wet smacks. He hoped Lancer couldn’t see that.

Could he see? What color were Danny’s eyes? How long were his teeth? Did he  _ know _ ?

Mr. Lancer’s warm hand burned through his shirt, a hot human print stamped between his shoulder blades—but then it was gone. “ _ Strange Weather _ !” he swore. “You’re shaking—I’ll be right back,” he assured, and then his rapid, panicked steps clattered out of the bathroom.

Danny leaned back from the toilet, pressing his head against the graffitied side of the stall. He reached clumsily up to swipe lines of bilious drool from his chin, but succeeded only in smearing green-tinted slime onto his nose. Sour film thickened his mouth, and pressure throbbed steadily behind his eyes. He wanted to shed his skin and fly away, but his body betrayed any such plans. Jittery and sick, it was all he could do to fold his heavy limbs into a ball and shake as the walls collapsed around him.

Time dilated. He trembled on the bathroom floor for what felt like a long time. It could have been minutes, or just as easily hours. It made no difference to him.

He closed his eyes, but then Jazz was there. Her velvet flats scuffed quietly on the tile and her gentle hands flew to smooth down his sweaty bangs. “What happened?” She asked. The warm living body pressed against him made Danny feel sick, not Hungry, and that was a mercy.

“Can’t wanna eat,” he moaned, voice splintered and small. “Hate it!”

“Oh,  _ Danny _ . He’s having a panic attack, Mr. Lancer.” A delicate grip wrapped around his arm and hauled him shakily to his feet, trembling with fear or effort or both. Jazz stroked his hair, pressing her knuckles against his sweaty forehead. “Running warm, too.” She patted his cheek to get his attention, and he allowed his head to loll towards her. “When’d you last—um, take your medicine?”

Danny swooned, dribbling all over the front of his shirt. “Wez’day.”

“That’s not right. You should be fine until next week,” said Jazz, and her face was a vague peach-colored smear in his periphery, but Danny could sense her frowning. 

“M’sure,” he insisted through a hitching breath. Was he crying? When had he started?

She turned to Mr. Lancer. “You were there when this happened, right? Did you notice anything at all that could have triggered it?”

“No—or,” Lancer stammered. “He raised his hand and I thought—well, I thought he was making excuses again, but…”

“S’kay,” said Danny. “I geddit.” He did that a lot, didn’t he? And he could hardly remember the last time he was actually sick. An undead microbiome was bad for regular pathogens, probably. He heaved.

“Shouldn’t we be getting the nurse?” Lancer hovered behind them, wringing his hands over his belly.

“Won’t do much good at this point. Help me clean him up a little, please.”

Mr. Lancer’s heartbeat was very, very loud—enough to make Danny whine and cringe, pawing miserably at his ears. Somewhere in the walls, pipes rattled, and the vent above the door seemed to wheeze. Jazz’s faint perfume was nauseating.  _ Everything _ was loud. 

“Jasmine—is this something that happens often? Why was the school never notified?” 

Danny could feel the older man’s wild heartbeat pounding through the hands on his shoulders, pounding booming crashing into his very bones. Some ugly instinct made him—part of him, anyway—want to give chase to such a beautiful prey-blood pulse, but the fleeting desire crashed against his wrenching sickness in a shower of inner sparks. His legs felt like rubber, and he coughed harsh and wet into one clumsy hand to mask his growl. Mr. Lancer patted him gently on the back and Danny hissed over the sink, choking and drivelling into the drain.

“It’s…” The tap turned on, washing away the slime, and suddenly there was a wet paper towel on his brow. “Do you remember his accident last year?”

“With your parents’ portal?”

“Yeah.” Jazz moved behind him, and there was another napkin pressed to his mouth, gently dabbing at his messy, trembling lips. “It had side effects,” she said, voice small and brittle. “There’s no cure, but it’s never gotten this bad since… well. Probably since around the actual Accident.”

“Your parents can’t do anything at all?” Lancer sounded dismayed.

“No,” Danny spat into the sink. “Can’t.” 

He cringed as Jazz dumped a handful of water over his face, but it helped to clear his vision somewhat, and he grunted his thanks. It took some guidance, but Danny craned his neck to lap bitter spray straight from the faucet. Lukewarm and mixed as it was with slippery ectoplasmic bile, he had to force the first revolting mouthful down by sheer force of will alone, but after that Danny found himself drinking greedily.

“Slow down,” Jazz chastised, but she made no move to stop him. “You’ll make yourself sick again.”

Reluctantly, Danny did as he was told. His hair got soaked and he nearly brained himself on the faucet in the process, but he managed to withdraw, panting hard. From there, he slumped upright against the wall and lowered his head, letting excess water roll down his nose to pool in the grout between his sneakers.

“You don’t need more, do you?” She wasn’t talking about the water. “Mr. Lancer, can we have a minute?”

Hesitation. Fear? No, only concern. Talking sounds, heard through molasses. Low urgency, reticent agreement. The bathroom door creaked and clicked shut like a thunder-crash, but the heartbeat lingered outside. Jazz said something else. She repeated her question.

He tried to—pay attention—shake his head. He really did, but the—words—the motion fell beyond his reach, meaningless twitching. Danny slavered anew. Did he need more? Did he  _ need _ it? He didn’t want it, but he was desperate. His stomach was Full but it wanted more, didn’t it? It really  _ did _ , didn’t it? His fingers curled of their own accord against the cheap shiny surface of the tiles—did the off-white linoleum crack under his nails? Were they too sharp right now? Jazz’s hands were on his wrists. He growled low in his chest.

She was saying his name, but she was little. She was small. Danny was—what was he? Shaking. Drooling. Rumbling. He had to be Hungry. He screwed his eyes shut, shivering, and ground his sharp teeth together. The pipes groaned in the walls. Somebody said something, but it just floated in one ear and out the other, meaningless noise.

Jazz reached out and slapped him. Hard. His head whipped to the side with the force of it, and he almost fell—would have fallen, had she not caught him.

Danny swatted at her out of reflex, but quickly faltered, sagging instead into her imploring arms. “Fuck,” he gasped. How long had he been holding his breath? She held him just a little too tight to be purely supportive, and he tried not to feel too hurt by the knowledge that she didn’t trust him. He wouldn’t, in her position. “Shit, thanks, Jazz.”

“Are you going to flip out if I let go of you?”

He shook his head and the room spun. “Lemme sit.” His stomach felt heavy and cold.

“I didn’t hit you too hard, did I?” There was guilt in her voice as she helped him slide down against the cool surface of the wall. “You were getting… uh.” Her sea-green eyes flicked towards the door, then back again. “The way you do. I didn’t know how else to snap you out of it.”

Danny shrugged. “S’kay,” he mumbled, then realized. “Crud, I’m sorry.” At her questioning look, he elaborated. “I made you run out of class.”

She laughed at him, short and strained. “I’d run out of a Harvard interview for you. You know that.”

Thick ghost-drool, still fresh, came away from his chin in syrupy ropes strung between his fingers. “Ew. I’ll try to refrain from having unplanned… emergencies while you’re shooting your shot.” He took the paper towel she offered him and scrubbed at the remaining mess. There was no way he could even think about Eating right now. “Where’re we at with Lancer, again? Er—where  _ is _ he, anyway?”

“I asked him to step out when you started getting riled up,” explained Jazz, very patiently. “He thinks it’s a side effect of the portal accident.”

Danny groaned. “Yeah, that works. Why’d I wait a year to puke my guts up, though?”

Jazz rolled her eyes, but her voice was gentle. “You’re more likely to get sick if you’re stressed. We can tell him that you’ve been stressed out and that must have caused the flare-up.”

That made sense, he thought. “Do I get to go home?” Ancients, he was exhausted.

“I’ll drive you.” Danny opened his mouth to protest, but she bulldozed him with practiced ease. “It’s only one period we’re missing, and I wanna make sure you rest.” Her expression hardened, if only minutely, when she added, “And you’re sure you ate on Wednesday?  _ This _ Wednesday?”

“Yes,” he insisted. “When I emptied the filtrator.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You hate the filtered stuff.”

“It’s piss, Jazz, but I’d take it over the alternative.” He grimaced and ran his tongue over his teeth. “Going feral and biting Skulker in half during a fight would be kinda shitty for my PR.”

“Don’t dodge the question,” scolded Jazz. “You know it doesn’t work on me. I just mean, did you have  _ enough _ ?”

“The whole cell,” promised Danny, with any luck sharply enough to brook no argument—maybe a little  _ too _ sharply, if her skeptical frown was any indication. “Chugged it, and my activity’s normal. I don’t need more. My—I don’t know. These  _ impulses _ don’t change that I’m Full.” He turned his eyes to the floor, cowing beneath her scrutiny. “Can we just go? Please? I wanna go home. I could sleep for a week and I miss my fucking blanket nest.”

Jazz nodded, but her expression was pinched, mouth set thin and unhappy. “It’s bad for you to repress this stuff,” she warned even as she pulled him to his feet. “Do it long enough and you’ll get… confused.”

“Not now,” he growled. Danny’s legs wobbled beneath him, knees knocking together, and a flush of anxious heat crawled up his neck. He hoped Mr. Lancer would be charitable in letting them go and asking few questions.

And he was, more or less. Mr. Lancer said he’d tell the attendance people that they were excused, and he also said something to Danny about hoping he’d feel better. It was probably a nice, tender moment of concern, but Danny wasn’t feeling it. 

Nausea churned in his guts, and it took an embarrassing amount of support to stagger out of the bathroom and into the hall. His belly was full and soothingly cold as though he had never been sick or starving at all. It made him feel—what? Like a doll, maybe. As though all his inside parts had been scooped out and he was just feeling afterimages. Jazz would probably have a field day if he told her about that, so he didn’t.

This wasn’t all in his head. It wasn’t. It couldn’t have been fake, imaginary,  _ made up _ . His feelings were real. They were real because ghosts weren’t monsters and he wasn’t a ghost. He was human and  _ alive _ .

Wasn’t he?

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Psychosomatic (Podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24914947) by [bibliophilea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliophilea/pseuds/bibliophilea)




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